The Hill’s Sam Baker pulls out this nugget from the latest Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll:
People seem to be forgetting what the healthcare reform law does, according to a new poll from the Kaiser Family Foundation.
The monthly tracking poll found a sharp decline in the number of people who are aware that the new law will offer financial help to people who must buy insurance on their own, rather than getting it from an employer. Last summer, 72 percent of those polled were aware of that benefit. Now it’s down to 58 percent.
Fewer than half of the respondents knew the law expands Medicaid, down from two-thirds just over a year ago. Only 29 percent knew that the law eliminates cost-sharing for some preventive services, and half said the law did not provide that benefit.
When all you hear about are the lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of reform and fear-mongering about increased costs and erosion of coverage, naturally you’d be reluctant to support reform. Which is why Nancy Pelosi’s now infamous statement — “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” — may not be the most eloquently expressed sentiment, but remains true: the real test of the measure’s support will come once it is implemented and Americans actually experience its benefits.
The same, by the way, holds for all of the employer surveys about dumping coverage. Asking businesses what they’ll do about a provision that doesn’t go into effect until 2014 today — when some 40 percent are unfamiliar with its details — is just begging for the worst-case scenario that’s grounded in rumors about “big government regulation” than any serious consideration of the actual provisions in the text of the law.
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